“It’s easy to have great team when you have great leaders,” said Eagles Offensive Coordinator Chris Holland.
Last season, Mountain View-Birch Tree/Liberty won the district championship for the first time since 2016, and two of those returning leaders are quarterback Tyler Watts and wide receiver Noah Jester.
“What goes through your head when you see the ball is near?” asks Ozone reporter Taylor Kauffman.
“Catch it. You know, catch it first score next celebrate with your brothers after,” said Jester.
“He’s a hard worker and he just seems always get open for me so I trust him my whole heart wouldn’t let anybody else back there,” Watts said. “Him and Carter are the best duo in the area. I wouldn’t ask for anybody else.”
This chemistry is a result of five years of playing together.
“Well I was their junior high coach. And recently, last year I just moved up to the high school level and they’ve been special ever since they were five-foot tall and 120 pounds,” Holland said.
“Since seventh grade, he moved here in seventh grade, and kicking it off since since then,” Watts said.
Last year Noah earned all state honors as one of nine receivers in the area to have over 800 yards receiving. While Tyler was the district Player of the Year with nearly 3,000 yards of total offense.
“If you look at their size and you look at their speed, they’re not exactly super freaks when it comes to their athleticism,” Holland said. “So I think a lot of that is their heart, and a lot of that is the hard work and you know we talk about winning in the dark all the time, before you go out in front of 1,000 people. You have to win in the dark and that’s 6:30am, that’s 7:30 at night, doing an extra workout.”
Their senior year, they want to win and they’re going to do whatever it takes, even if that means sharing snaps.
“Noah knows with the guys we have coming up that his numbers may go down — I’ve already talked to him about that — and he said, ‘Coach, I don’t care.’ He said, ‘I just want to win.’ And that’s when you have that, that makes a coach proud and makes you know that we’re gonna work hard to do great things,” Holland said.
“We just kind of work hard like we always do,” said Watts.
